tall man, small world

Sign of The Times

We have two sites, a glassworks with trade counter and a plastic window factory. Outside the plastic window factory is a sign with our logo on it which contains the word “glass”. Nowhere does it say “glass sales” or “get your quality cut glass here, guvner.”

It does have a phone number on it.

A few weeks ago our chap at the factory rang me to warn me about an irate individual who was upset that he couldn’t get glass from our plastic window factory. “It says glass on the sign and you’re telling me I’ve got to go to the other side of town, it’s disgusting, your managing director needs to take that sign down immediately, it’s misleading!” He’d said, unnecessarily angrily.

When the man arrived at my counter I was in the middle of taking an order. I said “I’ll be with you in a moment” but it seems he didn’t hear me because when I turned my attention to him he began to shout “Don’t bother, I’m not being treat with such ignorance by you, all the staff of this company are rude and arrogant, obviously you don’t have any customer care training.” I told him I had and he demanded to see my certificate, which is at home, I don’t tend to carry it around in my wallet. This exchange continued for a while, he’d clearly arrived looking for a confrontation as he felt he’d been wronged by our sign. He wrote a letter to complain about the sign. He didn’t get his glass.

About half an hour later a woman rang asking for an appointment for a quote, she lived quite a way out-of-town but had been to the main post office and seen the sign for our company on the building next door, and as she hadn’t been aware of our existence up until that point she thought she’d get a price from us for her windows as well as the other firms she’d asked.